More to the story: The Edwin Pratt slaying

The 1969 killing of Seattle civil rights activist Edwin Pratt is one of the city’s most notorious unsolved cases. As reported in the Seattle Weekly earlier this year and in its blog today, a new cold case initiative might help crack the case.

A photograph of slain Seattle civil rights leader Edwin Pratt is shown on the cover of the program for the May 25, 1979, dedication of the Pratt Fine Arts Center in Seattle. Pratt was killed just outside of his Shoreline, Wash., home on Jan. 26, 1969, and 35 years later, the case remains unsolved. (AP Photo/Program Courtesy of Charles V. Johnson, File)

Which brings us to back to 1994. That was when P-I sports reporter Dan Raley first printed the name of Tommy Kirk in connection with the case. Kirk, a known drug dealer and user, was shot to death four months after Pratt’s killing. Today, Kirk is still the best suspect the FBI’s got — partly thanks to Raley’s reporting — and Raley is still the only reporter to have spoken with the man who could be the closest living witness (and accomplice) to the crime, the man some believe drove the getaway car the night Kirk allegedly pulled the trigger.

We asked Raley to talk about how he got them. Turns out that before Raley talked with that unidentified man, he walked in on him shooting heroin in a Tacoma hotel. And Tommy Kirk’s mother extended a dinner invite she took back when she read the story. Here’s more from Raley

Dan Raley: Digging up a murder

I was simply asked to write something noting that 25 years had gone past and Edwin Pratt’s killer had never been found.

After the supposed throwaway story came out, my phone started ringing like crazy. First it was an ex-convict offering me a name, Tommy Kirk. Next it was detectives asking me if I had received any tips, which totally surprised me. From there, I started digging through police reports, prison documents and old P-I stories, and trying to find out everything I could about Tommy Kirk.

I started finding and calling names. I can’t remember how I located the alleged driver, only that I walked in on him and another man in a Tacoma hotel, shooting heroin, before we talked. I just knew he was the driver the way he smirked a little, knowing there was no proof.

That actually was one of two heroin houses I visited on this story, the other in Northgate, with the guys politely putting the needles under the coffee table.

Everything sort of fell together on this thing. I remember calling Tommy Kirk’s mother and getting invited to dinner. I told her to wait and read the story first, and if she still wanted to feed me, fine. She never called me.

After the fact, I saw a photo of a long-haired, angry looking Tommy Kirk holding a rifle, wearing bullet belts, looking like something out of the Symbionese Liberation Army, with me wishing we had obtained it and published it rather than his cleancut high school annual shot.

As for the man who paid for the Pratt hit, I heard a name that came with a preposterous twist — that he was a black contractor who didn’t like Pratt. If he was, he went to his grave a free man.